Sunday, February 11, 2018

Even though they had donated the building and the computer
equipment, has Beijing been conducting cyber espionage work on the African
Union headquarters during the last five years?

By Ringo Bones

The 200-million US dollar headquarters in Addis Ababa –
including the computer system - was fully funded and built by China and opened
to great fanfare back in 2012. Many in the West see it as a symbol of Beijing’s
thrust for influence in Africa and access to the continent’s natural resources.
Then an article published back in Friday, January 2, 2018 in the French
publication Le Monde quoting anonymous African Union sources – which included
IT technicians – reported that data from computers in the Chinese-built
building had been transferred nightly to Mainland Chinese servers during the
past five years. After the massive hack was discovered a year ago, the building’s
IT system including the servers was changes, according to Le Monde. During the
sweep for bugs after the discovery, microphones hidden in desks and the walls
were also detected and removed, the newspaper reported.

Sadly, despite of the report’s credibility, Chinese and
African Union officials that gathered in Addis Ababa for the bloc’s annual
summit both denied Le Monde’s report. China’s ambassador to the African Union,
Kuang Weilin, recently called the article “ridiculous and preposterous” and
said its publication was intended to put pressure on relations between Beijing
and the African continent.

When asked about the report, Rwandan President Paul Kagame,
who assumed the African Union chairmanship this year, said that he did not know
anything about it. “But in any case, I don’t think there is anything done here
that we would not like people to know,” he told reporters after a meeting of
African heads-of-state. “I don’t think spying is the specialty of the Chinese,
We have spies all over the place in this world,” Kagame said. “But I will not
have worried about being spied on in this building.” Kagame’s only concern, he
said, was that the African Union should have built its own headquarters,
instead of China. “I would only have wished that in Africa we got our act
together earlier on. We should have been able to build our own building.”

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Rumors are abound online, but are Filipino Facebook content
moderators actually bribed to remove content critical to Vladimir Putin, the Beijing
Communist Party and Pres. Rodrigo Duterte from Facebook?

By: Ringo Bones

I first heard it back in Friday, February 2, 2018 that a
whistleblower had acquired proof that Filipino Facebook content moderators had
been receiving bribes from various entities to advance their respective
political ends by removing Facebook posts critical of them. Even though someone
from the BBC had taken the story seriously but is still awaiting verification
on the authenticity of the material – which means it could be a big story two
weeks from now. But is there any truth to the story that Filipino Facebook
content moderators are taking bribes?

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook started to hire additional
personnel in the form of “content moderators” back in 2014 to control the tide
of “propaganda posts” by the so-called Islamic State that showcased beheadings
of western NGOs, charity workers and journalists caught up in their violent and
bloody empire building in the wake of the Syrian civil war. It is not just “gruesome
beheadings” that these so-called moderators block from being posted on
Facebook. These also include inappropriate posts of pornographic nature – i.e. the
so-called “dick pics” and their ilk. But since the so-called Islamic State is
now in the wan, many of this so-called “Facebook Content Moderators” have
branched out to do other tasks - sadly, they have the power to declare whichever
of your posts is “spam” at their own discretion if they are not caught by their
superiors.

Filipino Facebook Content Moderators are typically paid
around 24,000 pesos a month – around 376 UK pounds (quid) or a little over 500
US dollars – which is twice that the typical salary of a public school teacher
here in the Philippines. Rumors started to circulate around the middle of last
year after one of the moderators who is actually working for Amnesty
International infiltrated the center after it was found out that there are
Filipino Facebook content moderators who are paid by the Kremlin with up to
10,000 US dollars if they block video posts on Facebook that are taken by
Amnesty International operatives in Syria that show Russian troops and planes
loyal to Bashar Al Assad committing war crimes.

American and European non-government organizations and
charity groups critical of the current Philippine president who recently
compared himself to Adolf Hitler – i.e. Rodrigo Duterte – on his handling of
the Philippines’ so-called drug problem got their Facebook pages either blocked
or made “unvisitable” in the Philippines. Should there be an ethics committee
serving as an oversight on Filipino Facebook Content Moderators?

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Given that it was originally revealed as an NSA creation by
Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing, could the recent WannaCry Ransomware cyber attacks
someday trigger a malware apocalypse?

By: Ringo Bones

The so-called “Zombie Apocalypse” might have been only a
product of Hollywood, but the recent Ransomware malware attacks is not only
real but painfully tangible for us who have grown dependent to the global
internet infrastructure. The WannaCry Ransomware cyber attacks started back in May
12, 2017 and traced to be triggered in the Hong Kong – Singapore time zone in
the South-East Asian region and then spread to over 150 countries. The
worst-hit countries were reported to be Russia, Ukraine, India and Taiwan. It
eventually infected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries but got
press notice only after the malware affected Britain’s National Health Service
(NHS) and scores of children’s hospitals in the UK.

The WannaCry Ransomware was found to specifically infect
systems that have not been updated with the most recent security updates –
especially the one issued by Microsoft back in March 14, 2017. The Ransomware
malware also managed to scare the pants off of conspiracy theorists after I.T.
experts found out that it uses the EternalBlue Exploit developed by the U.S.
National Security Agency (NSA) as revealed by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

It got the moniker “Ransomware” after the NSA-developed
malware got into the hands of criminal hackers who extorted money to computer
system owners affected by their malware attack. They usually ask for 500 to 600
U.S. dollars worth in bitcoins to restore their computer systems into full
working order. Sadly, there are variants of the Ransomware malware that doesn’t
have the kill-switch that can be turned off by the criminal hackers after you
pay then the required bitcoin funds.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Given their “proviso” for a whitelist so that your ads will
still be displayed when they’re installed, are adblockers nothing more than a
21st Century online protection racket?

By: Ringo Bones

The “whitelist” proviso of some leading adblockers out
there, the most notorious of which is Adblock Plus’ Whitelist that allows “acceptable”
ads to show or punch through once the Adblock Plus application is installed in
your personal computer or smartphone had many comparing it to an online
protection racket after it was leaked that if a company or agency wants to get
into Adblock Plus’ “Whitelist”, all they have to do is to pay the company who
runs Adblock Plus this amount of money to be included on their so-called “Whitelist”.
If this is not a bona fide protection racket, I don’t know what is.

As of late, the online adblocking industry had engendered a
so-called online adblocking arms race where some firms already have created and
successfully tested easily installable applications that can block the
adblockers for those firms who find that Adblocker Plus’ “Whitelist” fee just
too rich for their blood.

On of these blockers for adblockers applications is Page
Fair which according to the firm aimed to benefit small to medium scale mom and
pop online publishers and content providers to circumvent Adblocker Plaus and
other adblocker apps from depriving them of their revenue. Given that current
adblocker apps are a threat to online free enterprise comparable to Stalin era
Marxist-Leninist socialism, why are a growing number of netizens are installing
them in the first place?

The adblocker apps’ original raison d’être was to block
annoying ads from popping up when a typical netizen is doing online research. Sadly,
the latest versions of adblockers – especially those that are bundled with the
latest personal computer and smartphone operating systems are no longer
provided with an on-off switch. Worse still, unless you are a high level
information technology engineer who knows how to check the subroutine and / or source-code
of the operating system of the desktop personal computer, smartphone, tablet or
other smart device you are currently using, your device doesn’t tell you that
there is some form of adblocking application installed in the device you are currently
using to surf the web – it only tells you once you’ve visited an internet site
with an adblock detector that tells you that you can only proceed further once
you’ve turned off your adblock app. Sadder still, the latest adblock apps don’t
come with an on-off switch.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Shown to be bigger than 2010 WikiLeaks or the Edward Snowden
leak of 2013, is the Panama Papers Leak of the offshore law firm Mossack
Fonseka the largest online data leak so far?

By: Ringo Bones

Despite and online publication about it is currently being
blocked by Baidu – The People’s Republic of China’s equivalent of Google and
the only search engine permitted to function in Mainland China by the Beijing
Communist Party – the Panama Papers Leak of the offshore law firm Mossack
Fonseka is currently revealed to be the largest online data leak ever. It is
larger, in fact, than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010
and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by former U.S. National
Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden in 2013 – but actually, how big is it?

There are 11.5 million documents and 2.6 terabytes – or about
260 gigabytes – of information drawn from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database. By
way of comparison, the 2010 WikiLeaks only consisted of 1.76 gigabytes of data
and the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013 is even much smaller in data size
despite of the large-scale global political fallout. And because of its size,
the Panama Papers Leak could be harder to cyber-censor because proxy sites are
probably popping up all over the world-wide-web. The “Great Firewall of China”
would be akin to using a sieve to plug a water leak.

The records were first obtained from an anonymous source by
the German newspaper Sϋddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The ICIJ then
shared them with a large network of international partners – including the
Guardian and the BBC. The documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can
exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. Twelve national leaders are among the
143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world
known to have been using offshore tax havens and a significant number of them
are incumbent members and immediate families of the Beijing Communist Party.
Ever since the news about the Panama Papers Leak went global, Baidu – The People’s
Republic of China’s equivalent of Google and the only search engine authorized
by the monolithic communist party to operate in Mainland China – had been
blocking the story for frat that it may be just a “Western Plot” against the Beijing
Communist Party.

A 2-billion US dollar trail leads all the way to Russian
strongman Vladimir Putin via the Russian president’s best friend – a cellist
named Sergei Roldugin – is at the center of a scheme in which money from the Russian
state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in
2013 Putin’s daughter Katerina got married. And despite the legality of the
leaked documents, Russia’s official news agency had dismissed the revelations
as a “Western plot” against Vladimir Putin.

Among the other national leaders revealed by the Panama
Papers Leak to have offshore wealth are Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,
ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq Ayad Alawi,
president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, Alaa Mubarak – son of Egypt’s former
president and the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíỗ
Gunnlsughsson. And what irked the international community most is on how
Mossack Fonseca helped governments that are under imposed economic sanctions by
the UN Security Council to still do business with impunity – like North Korea
and Russia since the unlawful Donetsk Region annexation by the Putin regime.

Mossack Fonseca is a Panama-based law firm whose services include
incorporating companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin
Islands. It administers offshore firms for a yearly fee. Other services include
wealth management. The firm is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation. Its
website boasts of a global network with 600 people working in 42 countries. It
has franchises around the world, where separately owned affiliates sign up new
customers and have exclusive rights to use its brand. Mossack Fonseca operates
in tax havens including Switzerland, Cyprus and British Virgin Islands and in
the British crown dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.